Tiny Houses, Big Tree / Little Tree & Stock/Broth

Wow, time does indeed fly by. Can't believe it's the end of the year already! Just a quick documentation of what we've been up to the past few weeks.

Went to a Tiny House Festival a few miles south of us. One of the most disorganized festivals we've ever attended. When we go to these things we usually go very early, get through & get out. We got to this one a bit late & the crowds were horrendous. Parking wasn't so bad but there was no rhyme or reason to it. The price of admission was ridiculous but we found out that the $$ were to go to various charities. So, in we went. We first encountered converted school buses & vintage cars & campers which were very cool.

However it soon became obvious that this was, as Greg called it ... a festival for the gathering of young & old hippies alike.

 By the time we made it over to the new tiny houses the lines were 30 & 40 people long!

Photo courtesy of FL Tiny House Festival.

We said, no thank you, walked around a bit more & then left to meet some friends for lunch.

The next weekend was Thanksgiving. We went to the country house & invited my In-laws over for dinner. We were supposed to eat around 2:00 but the turkey would not cook! The oven there has been slowly going on the blink & it decided to nearly stop working that day. We kept turning it up. It was on almost 400 degrees before everything finally got done. Well, the turkey never fully cooked by the bones but we got enough breast meat sliced to finally eat around 4:30.

We don't get much fall color in this part of the country but the sycamore trees usually come through with some. I planted one last year, I think. The big old sycamore in the branch was showing color & my little new one was as well. They matched, how sweet.

See the little one in the oh so brown field?

When we got back to the city I decided to go ahead & make poultry stock. I added a frozen chicken carcass to the turkey carcass. While I was at it I decided to go ahead & make some beef stock from some steak bones that were in the freezer. AND, while searching for the steak bones I found some raw pork, beef & lamb bones, so I decided to go ahead & make bone broth. I used the stove top for the poultry & beef stock & cooked/simmered it for about 24 hours. Since the bone broth needed to cook for about 48 hours, I used my trusty 18 qt. electric roaster for that (after roasting the bones in the oven for about an hour).

It took almost 4 days to cook, strain, sieve & can it all. The poultry stock came out the creamiest that I've ever made. The beef broth is ok. But, the bone broth is wonderful. I only had 2 jars of meat stock left in my pantry so this makes me happy to get this done. Here's a pic of the finished product(s) 52 pints total!

Poultry stock, bone broth & beef stock.

I think that catches me up for now. I'm in the process of shopping around for health insurance so got to get back on the web & phone to get that done, ugh. Next up is baking Christmas goodies.

Putting the cave before the cheese & It's not a Squeezo but ...

No new news on the Garden Prep, Driveway or In-laws move. Weather & life have gotten in the way. We have had over 18" of rain at the Country House since we started the driveway (about 4 weeks ago). We should have put it in last summer when there was an 18" deficit ;)

I decided to test re-hydrating a few of my carrots. It works!

Top - dehydrated / Bottom - looks just like the original!

On another note, it's windy & COLD. If it was just cold I would be a happy camper. But, the wind makes it miserable. Woke up to 33 degrees w/wind gusts 16 -20 mph & it's supposed to be 28 tomorrow morning. I know that's not anything like many of you guys are dealing with, but for us here in the Southeast, that's COLD. But it's going to warm up to normal, in the upper 60s w/lows in the upper 40s, the next week. I like those temps & am looking forward to Spring but dreading the heat & humidity that comes afterwards. My little seedlings are growing & the plan was to start hardening off this weekend but with the cold temps, I'll wait to start next week.

This was a typical week for me ... Estate Sales Thursday at lunch & Friday afternoon. I try leave work around 3:00 on Fridays & if there is sale nearby, I'll stop. Found a mini muffin pan & 'like new' blanket at one -- ho hum. Then went to one at a very eclectic house where 2 nice gentlemen used to live. There was life sized Betty Boop in the foyer, Marilyn Monroe memorabilia in 1 bedroom & Adonis like memorabilia in another bedroom. However, the kitchen had a lot of nice items, all priced too high (this particular vendor isn't apt to discount unless it is a REALLY high dollar item). I didn't need a Kitchenaide 620 mixer. This particular model sells new for around $800 & they had it listed for $445. I guess that would be a bargain to some, but like I said I don't need one as I already have a lesser one that works just fine for me.

While I continued to browse, I came around the other side of the kitchen & I saw it! It's something I have had on my Craig's List items for quite some time & NONE ever show up. I even mentioned that fact over at  5 acres & a dream a week or so ago. Well, there she stood,  the same brand that Leigh has (but w/o the strainer attachments).

It's a Roma & I got it for $20 & if it's been used, you can't tell. Woo Hoo! 

Now the bad news. I know when I see something that I think will get good use I should just go ahead & buy it (if it's a decent price). I've lost too many deals by not acting quickly. Well, I happened to notice a dial gauge on a pot in a partially closed cabinet. I pulled it out & it was a 21 qt. Presto Pressure Canner! It was one of the older models but was in great shape. It didn't have a price. The vendors were busy & I was on my lunch break so I walked away w/o finding how much they wanted. Told Greg about it & he said that we should ride back over there Saturday morning. We did, & it was gone ;( Oh well, they probably wanted $75 for a $110 item. 

After the Estate Sale we headed to my bosses house. He just remodeled his kitchen & had an old wine cooler that he wanted to give me. Yes, I said give me! 

I have a smaller wine cooler that is stocked w/wine so didn't really need another one for that purpose. But, I have been reading about cheese making & have learned that if you don't have an actual wine cave, root cellar or continually cool spot to age cheese, that a wine cooler will work great. So, even though I have never made hard or aged cheese & I don't have a source for milk yet, I have a place to age my cheese when I do get around to making it. Plus, the price was right this time.

Lastly, we are yet again making meat stock. This batch is the best yet. I used frozen meat pieces, leftover pork roast, porkchop bones, ribs bones & of course chicken bones. We cooked it in my roasting pan for about 28 hours, cooled, skimmed off the fat, warmed & canned 12 pints this morning. 

I put Tattler lids/rings on 2 of the pints as a test. The only real difference in instructions that I can tell so far, is that you tighten the outer ring as soon as you take them out of the canner. Crossing fingers that they work as advertised. Of course, the real test is the 2nd, 3rd, etc. uses in the future.

I also saved all the bones I had used & put those in the crock pot, covered w/water last night. Today, we are trying our hand at making mock demi glace with that bone broth. We started with about 2 quarts of triple strained bone stock & it has been simmering for about 6 hours & reduced by a little more than 1/2. It doesn't seem to be thickening though, so we'll see. Probably not enough marrow left in the bones.

It's marinated ribeyes, twice baked potatoes & roasted asparagus for dinner. Going to cook those steaks quickly, cause it's windy & COLD outside.

The past few weeks

I have been a bit busy the past few weeks.

In addition to learning how to process chickens I went to a cheese making class with a few of my city girlfriends. I have transplanted lettuce plants, planted more garlic, fertilized my garden & went to several estate sales. And I've made more pepper jelly & tried my hand at monkey butter (thanks to SciFiChick for that last one - it's delicious). Greg brought home his label maker from work to make it easier to label my jars. You get tired of writing the same thing over & over for each jar but I definitely want them all labelled as I don't want to guess what's inside, much less the date it was processed.



Label

Pepper Jelly & Monkey Butter








And I made meat stock. I took kymber's advice & just threw in all my meat bones (beef, pork & chicken), vegetable pieces that I had stored in the freezer & even added crock pot juice. You know, the extra juice that is made when you cook a roast in the crock pot. I never use it all to make gravy & used to just throw it out but decided to freeze it for stock. I had both beef & pork juice. I threw it all in my big stock pan & cooked it for about 2 hours. I then strained it & put in my big crock pot with the bones, with the lid ajar, for about 4-5 more hours. I strained again & pressure canned. What I got was 7 pints of a wonderfully aromatic & tasty meat stock.

Meat Stock

I was also able to stop in & say hello to my friend Stephen last week. I had a cup of coffee with him which was delicious. He says it was delicious because he adds egg shells. Huh, who knew? Anyway, he's such an easy person to talk with & we seem to get along well. We discussed his writing style & mine. His is much more 'sit down & let it flow' all at one time. Mine is more of the write a few lines, save, walk away, come back, write a few more lines, rearrange, walk away, come back proof & then publish. Unfortunately for him he is constantly interrupted which breaks his rhythm. I hope he gets some time to himself because he writes beautifully, from the heart.

This past weekend I took a basic pistol safety course through one of our local gun shops. It's the same shop  that I got my CWP from a few months back. This course was an all day class, with classroom time in the morning, a short break for lunch & then about 3 hours of range time at a FOP range & then back to the class for our test which we all passed, yeah! The range was pretty cool as we got to try several different types of hand guns. There were three different sections on the range.

1) Shoot at metal targets that pinged & either 'went down' when hit or flipped around to the other side. We used a 9mm on that one.
2) Basic target w/a long barrel .22.
3) Don't remember what they called this one but firing a .380 or a .40 cal ... shoot from hold down position - bring arms up, aim & shoot 1 shot to the middle, down, then up to shoot 2 shots to the middle, down, then up again to 2 shots to the middle again, down then up for 1 shot to the head.

I did best on the last one, I chose the .40 cal & hit all but 1 shot within the rings. The weather was the only bad thing, damp, windy & cold. But, all in all it was an enjoyable day.

I helped Greg inventory his today. I created a spreadsheet with the makes, models & serial numbers. He took pictures & got them stored on hard drive & thumb drive & will be printing a copy to put in a safe place.

And last but not least, we have been busy off & on, moving my In-Laws vacation trailer from it's current home to our country property. It's more work than you think & I'll post more on that later.

I'm off to try a new Cabbage recipe along with Sea Bass & Asparagus that Greg is cooking for our Sunday night dinner.

In case I don't get the chance to post again, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!